Aggressive HBOS steals a march on its rivals

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FATE has been kind to HBOS, the UK’s fifth-biggest bank. As the country’s biggest provider of home loans, the recent unprecedented rise in house prices has played directly to its strengths.

The bank, formed from the merger of Halifax, once Britain’s biggest building society, and Bank of Scotland, one of the country’s smaller banks, has managed to snatch nearly a third share of UK mortgage lending in a year when the cost of an average home in Britain has risen by a quarter.

HBOS’s lending figures are a testament to a bold strategy, based on leading prices downwards across a